Musings on our world [and my tiny world] from a Scottish quine living in America.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Gordon the Gopher and Curious George

Having just wasted five minutes of my life looking for photos of Brown and Bush, I find it rather telling that I can't find any the normal way I pillage for legal visuals for this 'ere blog. This shows how in the grand news circle of the USA, Brown meeting with Bush was a non-event. In many ways it is an accurate assessment.

Lets see. We had George spout off about what a funny guy Brown is and not a 'dour scot' at all (pronouncing dour to rhyme with sour instead of poor) and how they'll be fast friends. I have an image of Bush boring Brown silly with tales of 'my great great great great grandfather' was Scottish and 'oh I went there on holiday' (- oh well it was the G-8 summit but you get the picture).

[One of my favourite sports is informing Americans who claim to be Scottish too (yes they actually say this) that no they are not - they have Scottish heritage and you can't be called Scottish unless you've put up with horizontal rain pelting your frozen forehead as you walk home from school in February at age 10. If I'm particularly successful I follow it up with saying that someone who has Indian parents but has been born or brought up in Scotland with the accent and everything is Scottish!]

Back to GB meets GB. Brown on the other hand looked like he was about as pleased to share two meals and a dubious golf cart ride with George as a colonescapy! No friendly remarks made about the blithering dunderheid to his left. Just an agreement not to rock the Iraq boat for now and help get George focused on something actually humane and worthwhile like world poverty and Darfur (likely payment for no boat rocking antics).

Gordon is coming into his own by all appearances in the UK. Everyone seems relieved to have someone less concerned with holidays with the rich and famous and more meat and potatoes politics. It should not be surprising that after ten years of smoke and mirrors Blair governance, warts and all Gordon is a welcome relief. But I think Gordy's slippery salmon to the North may prove to be more of a challenge than he thinks (see here for a brilliant take on the recent flag debacle)

The funny aspect is that Cameron's emulation of Blair appears to be backfiring in a serious way!! Maybe he'll finally go back to admitting he's an aristocratic toff after all?